Ask to talk to the son-in-law. He took the test. He must know something about insurance. He's probably doing some selling himself. Tell your mom you are more comfortable talking to someone your own age instead of aunty. You just need him to explain a few things about the policy.

Regarding commissions. Ten years ago, there was this insurance agent that comes to my office to talk to our boss. We see him nearly every week. The frequency of his visit gradually reduces until we see him only one or twice a year. Now, we don't see him anymore. Just mail the quarterly premium cheque to the insurance company.

As I understand it, most of this kind of insurance policies run for a very long term. Decades. But the agents gets most of their commissions early on. This reduces, so that after just a few years, the agent get no commission at all. This means they have to go out and get new customers all the time. They cannot go out to get lots of customers for 3 years, and then just sit back and draw their commission for the next 50 years.

It is also necessary, because when an agent has just started out, he has only a few customers. Let's say an agent gets 5 new customers on his first month, and another 5 every month. On the 12th month, he would have 60 customers. After 10 years, he would have 600 customers. If he was drawing a constant commission from each customer, he would starve for the first couple of years, and after 20 years, be extremely rich. Therefore the commission is structured in such a way that the agent gets most of his commission early on in the first few years of each customer's policy.

My guess is, by the time the insurance policy matures, most people do not have an insurance agent anymore. It does not matter whether your agent is now 40 or 60 years old. In 30 years time, they will both be retired.